Authors: Rachel Vincent
The reaper shrugged. “I have nothing else planned till midnight.”
“Good.” I got out of the car and shoved my door closed as he stepped right through his. “That gives us five hours to…” Oh, crap. I glanced at my cell phone screen again, then groaned. It was just after seven.
I’d stood Nash up. Again.
I took several steps toward the house, then froze when my gaze landed on the front porch. Where Nash sat watching us.
“You know, pretty soon I’m going to start taking this personally.”
“Hey, I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”
Nash stood as I unlocked the door, but instead of following me inside, he stepped into the doorway, one hand on either side of the frame. Symbolically blocking Tod from entering, since he couldn’t physically keep the reaper from doing anything. “I need to talk to Kaylee.”
“So talk.” Tod disappeared from the front porch, then reappeared next to me in the living room, and when Nash turned around, his eyes were flashing in anger.
“This is private.”
Tod opened his mouth, then seemed to change his mind about whatever he was going to say and looked at me instead, brows raised in question.
I nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for…everything.” But I owed Nash both an apology and an explanation.
Tod disappeared from my living room as fast as he’d appeared, and Nash closed the front door and leaned against it, watching me. “What happened?”
I collapsed onto the couch next to Styx, and ran one hand over her fur. “Sabine figured out that Beck’s an incubus, and Alec said that if he’s in heat, or whatever, Danica probably
isn’t the first student he’s slept with, so we did some research and figured out—”
Nash shook his head. “I know all that. I talked to Sabine while I was waiting on your front porch. For almost an hour.” He dropped into my dad’s armchair and stared at me across the coffee table. “What happened with Tod?”
“With Tod?” I said. And then his meaning sank in, and my gaze dropped. I hadn’t done anything wrong—other than breaking into Lakeside and springing a patient—but I couldn’t deny that I knew what he meant. Not anymore.
“Don’t let him do this, Kaylee.”
“I’m not letting him do anything,” I said, as exhaustion, confusion, and fear crashed over me, drawing all of the day’s overwhelming risks and revelations into one sharp point of focus. “What good is it going to do for us to have this conversation? I’m sorry I stood you up, but nothing happened with Tod.”
Nash blinked. “But you know how he feels?”
“I kinda figured it out.” But not as soon as I should have. Maybe if my life wasn’t full of nightmares, and hellions, and incubi, I would have had time to stop and notice what was going on with the people in my life who weren’t trying to kill me.
“Then why are you still hanging out with him? How am I supposed to take that?”
“He’s my friend, Nash.” Styx twitched in her sleep beneath my hand, and I watched her, wishing my life was as simple as hers. Eat. Sleep. Growl at everyone you don’t like. There was something to be said for simplicity.
“No.” Nash shook his head and leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees, trying to catch my gaze. “He’s in love with you, Kaylee.”
“That’s…” Wait.
What?
I hadn’t thought it through using those words. I hadn’t realized…
My heart pounded, and I didn’t know how to interpret the sudden lurch of my stomach into my throat.
“No,” I said, trying not to remember Tod holding my hand in the adolescent ward, or pulling me out of the Netherworld right before Avari could grab me, or staying all night with me and Emma to make sure no one tried to possess her again. Or telling me I don’t belong with Nash… “But even if he is, what does it matter, Nash? Really. I’m going to die in a few days, and after that, none of this will matter.”
So can’t we just go on ignoring it for a little longer…?
“It’ll matter to me.” He looked like I’d just punched him. How could things suddenly be so complicated?
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” My head felt like it was going to explode. “I just meant—”
“I don’t like you hanging out with him alone.”
My temper spiked, and my apology died a swift death on the end of my tongue. “You mean like you hang out with Sabine alone, even though she’s in love with you?”
Nash rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “That’s different.”
“You’re right.” I pulled Styx into my arms and stood with her, stomping toward the kitchen. “Sabine hijacked my dreams and tried to feed me to the Netherworld to get to you. Everything she says is intended to either drive a wedge between us or put herself in your bed. But Tod’s never tried to hurt you and he’s never even come close to pulling his clothes off and jumping me. So yeah, I guess that
is
different.”
The recliner creaked, then Nash’s footsteps followed me into the kitchen. “The difference between Tod and Sabine is that she’s honest about it. You know what she’s up to, and you know why, but you’ll never see the strings Tod’s pulling
behind the scenes until suddenly you’re just magically where he wants you to be.”
“He isn’t pulling any strings, Nash. He’s just helping me with something very important. And if I wind up somewhere other than where I am now, it won’t be because he wanted me there. It’ll be because
I
want me there.” I set Styx on the floor and stood to find Nash watching me, arms crossed over his chest.
“What the hell does that mean?”
What
did
that mean? I hadn’t thought it through, I’d just…let it out.
I exhaled slowly, trying to push everything irrelevant—everything I knew I wouldn’t have time to really address—to the back of my mind. “It doesn’t mean anything except that I needed help, and he came through. That’s what a friend does.”
“If you needed help, why didn’t you ask me? Why don’t you ever want my help anymore, Kaylee?”
“I…” The words died on my tongue, my answer as incomplete as the thought behind it. I’d asked Tod and Alec for help with Beck. Hell, I’d even asked Sabine for help. But I’d told Nash to go to baseball practice while the rest of us researched and plotted. Was he right? Had I been excluding him?
Not on purpose. In fact, I hadn’t even thought about him not being there, because I was focused on Mr. Beck and Nash couldn’t help with that. He couldn’t read Beck’s fear to ID him. He couldn’t give us background info on incubi, and he couldn’t get me into the mental health ward unseen.
“You couldn’t help me with this,” I said, finally. “I needed Tod.” My logic was sound, so why did I feel so guilty about the truth?
Nash’s irises churned in anger. “You needed Tod. Do you hear yourself? You’re supposed to need me.”
The ache in my chest grew into a throbbing so fierce I
could hardly breathe. “That’s not what I meant.” Things were falling apart. In spite of my best effort to hold everything together until the end—until my end—my life was unraveling faster than I could grasp at the threads, and I could see chaos bulging through the seams.
Nash watched me, waiting for more, but Styx started whining then and glanced from me to the fridge, where I gripped the door handle much harder than necessary. She was hungry. As usual. And taking care of her was easier than taking care of Nash.
I pulled open the fridge and took a package of raw sirloin from the bottom shelf. Styx preferred venison, but we were out, and beef would do in a pinch. Nothing ground, though. Styx didn’t just want to eat—she wanted to tear flesh with her tiny little teeth.
Maybe that was why Cujo was constantly pissed off.
“Do you like him?” Nash demanded, leaning against the peninsula, and I closed my eyes, wishing I could erase this moment forever, like it had never happened. But when I opened my eyes, that moment was still there, taunting me with its stamina.
Styx went crazy at my feet as I peeled clear plastic back from the beef. I dropped a small hunk of meat into her bowl, and she dug in, growling like her meal was still alive and kicking as she ripped small chunks from it and swallowed them whole, more like a cat than a dog.
“Uh-oh, trouble in paradise?” a new voice said, and my head popped up in surprise. Thane sat on the small table in our dining nook, and Styx hadn’t so much as acknowledged his presence. “Yeah, evidently fresh meat outranks even the dreaded reaper,” he said, when he noticed me frowning at the dog.
“Kaylee.” Nash stepped into my line of sight to reclaim my
attention, though he had no idea what had stolen it. “Do you like him?”
“Like who?” Thane slid off the table and walked right through Nash, and I shuddered, revolted and horrified by the sight of them…blended together.
“Does it matter?” I wrapped the remaining meat up, trying desperately to pretend that the man assigned to kill me wasn’t getting yet another unauthorized peek into my private life.
“Of course it matters,” Nash snapped. “Why wouldn’t it?”
I shoved the meat into the fridge and spun to face him, struggling not to vent my fury at Thane on him. “Because in three days, I’m going to be dead, and this’ll be the mootest point of all time.”
“Well said!” Thane shouted, and his voice echoed around the room like thunder, though only I could hear it.
“It matters to me,” Nash insisted. “And the question won’t be moot in three days, because Tod will still be here, and every time I look at him, I’m going to know how he felt about you and wonder if that was mutual. If my own brother was trying to steal my girlfriend. So answer me! Do you like him?”
“Oooh, there’s a brother?” Thane demanded, standing inches away, his chest practically brushing my right shoulder. “Drama, drama, drama.”
I did my best to ignore the reaper, and focus on Nash. “First of all, I’m not a piece of property that can be stolen.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Nash began, but I cut him off.
“And second of all, Tod isn’t trying to steal anything from you. You and your mom are all he has left in the world, and I don’t think he’d ever intentionally hurt you.”
“You know, Cain and Abel were brothers…” Thane said, and I whirled on him, fury sparking like fire in my veins.
But before I could say a word, Nash followed my gaze and found…nothing.
“Is that him? Is he
here?
” Nash demanded. “Is he talking to you, now?”
“Why would this Tod be invisible?” Thane asked. “Don’t you have any human friends?”
I ignored him and focused on Nash. “No, it’s not Tod. It’s—”
“Uh-uh…” Thane taunted, crossing in front of me slowly, his nose brushing my cheek on its way to my ear, and I shuddered in revulsion. “If you tell him, I’ll have to kill him. And once I’ve broken one rule, I’m on the run anyway, so what’s to stop me from breaking another one and taking you
right…now…?
” He circled behind me, and his hand trailed across my lower back. I closed my eyes, fighting nausea at his touch.
“Kaylee!” Nash shouted. “Answer me!”
But I couldn’t. I could barely even think past the terror and loathing crawling through me.
“So this’ll be our little secret, right, Kaylee?” the reaper whispered into my other ear, as he completed the circle around me.
“Tod!” Nash growled through clenched teeth, glaring at random spots in the empty room. “Get the hell out of here.”
“It’s not Tod!” I said, and the reaper stiffened at my side, until I continued. “It’s not
anyone
.”
“Good girl…” Thane whispered. “Until next time…” Then he disappeared, and I leaned against the kitchen counter, sagging with relief.
“Then what’s wrong?” Nash asked, and my brain raced as I tried to refocus on him in the aftershock of Thane’s invasion.
“I don’t know, Nash. I don’t know if I like Tod.”
The truth was that I hadn’t even considered the possibility until a couple of hours earlier, because it hadn’t seemed real.
I wasn’t Emma or Sophie. I didn’t have C-cups bouncing in front of me with every step and I didn’t dance around in tiny skirts. Guys didn’t fight over me. Nash was an anomaly. I never would have been on his radar if we didn’t share a species, so it had never occurred to me that I might be on anyone else’s.
In fact, the reverse had always seemed much more plausible—that someone else would steal
him
away from
me
.
“Do you like Sabine?” I asked softly, silently daring him to tell me the truth, in the face of his own accusations.
Nash turned and stomped into the living room. “This isn’t about Sabine.”
I followed him, truly irritated now. “Maybe it should be. You wanna know what I think?” I asked, then gave him no time to reply. “I think you
do
still like Sabine, at least a little bit. I think you like it that she still wants you, and you like flirting with her when I’m not there, dangling the possibility in front of her. Playing her game.” I sucked in a deep breath, surprised to realize that I was now
thoroughly
pissed at what amounted to his hypocrisy.
“But I think it goes beyond that. I know how serious the two of you were, and I don’t think you can ever really get over something like that. Not completely. And you know it. But you still hang out with her, alone, in your room. Practically daring each other to take things beyond friendship. Then you have the nerve to ask me if I like Tod, three days before I’m going to die?”
How could the four of us
possibly
be so tangled up in one another? And how could I not have seen it coming?
Nash stared at me, stunned. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry I opened this can of worms, especially now. I swear I have no intention of taking things beyond friendship with Sabine, but this is the second time this week you’ve stood me
up, then turned up with Tod. And I know he wants you, and it was starting to look like that might be mutual…?”
His voice went up on the end in question. He was still asking. And I didn’t want to lie. But did it really matter? So what if Tod was funny, and unpredictable, and there every time I needed him. So what if he liked it when I “raged” against things and didn’t think I was crazy for wanting to break into Lakeside? So what if he’d spent months hanging out, getting to know me instead of trying to feel me up the first week we met.
What did that matter? What good was the possibility—the life-changing, love-wrecking possibility—when I wouldn’t be around to explore it?
Should I admit that I might—
might
—like Tod back, when that would wreck everything between me and Nash for no reason at all?
It would be different if I weren’t dying. If I was going to have a chance to decide how I felt and think about the long-term consequences. But since that wasn’t going to happen…